Industry association: Biobased plastics land use does not pose threat to food crops

7:59 AM MDT | April 10, 2013 | Francinia Protti-Alvarez

Biobased plastics production requires only 0.006% of the 5-billion hectare global agricultural area, according to data recently published by industry body European Bioplastics (Berlin). This is the surface required to grow sufficient feedstock for today's biobased plastics production, and it illustrates that land area dedicated to crop cultivation for biobased plastics does not compete with land used to grow food crops, European Bioplastics says. European Bioplastics' market data estimates production capacities of about 1.2 million m.t./year in 2011. This...